The Big, Black Camera

[mbarrick]

Tomorrow I will be buying one of these - a full blown, big, black camera of doom. I was torn between this and a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (slightly less expensive) or EOS 20D (more expensive) and settled on the Olympus E-300 EVOLT for a few reasons. The Canon EOS 20D is more light sensitive (3200 ISO equivalent maximum) but twice the light sensitivity will cost me twice the money and shooting 3200 ISO is absurdly grainy anyway. The Digital Rebel is only about 2/3 the price of the E-300, but at the cost of some crippled functions and a plastic body. The E-300 has a professional aluminium body (an important consideration considering the abuse my cameras have to live with). The resolution of the E-300 is actually higher than the Digital Rebel and on par with the 20D (8 Mpx, compared to 6.3 [and just stupidly high compared to the 2.1 Mpx of my current camera!]). The lens selection with Olympus is more restricted than what is available for the Canon EOS series, but what there is to chose from covers everything I'm going to want to get out of this camera and I can't afford to get all of it right way anyway. In other words, the potential money-pit for add-ons is deeper than I can dive... there are *always* more lenses and accessories to buy than money to buy them with.

Comments

[cheekydevil.livejournal.com]

OoooOOOoooo ... JEALOUS!

[sciencequeen.livejournal.com]

Would this be in addition to your current camera, or replacing?

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

A little of both. Mostly I'll be using the new camera, but I can do some interesting things with both of them together.

[sheilamarie.livejournal.com]

Psst - http://www.pma-show.com/review/canon/001_EOS_digital_rebel_xt.html

I'm drooling over the 20D myself. Still considering downloading the hack that allows the DRebel to act like the 10D (which the 20D replaced) If the above link is true, which it just may be since the 10D and DRebel used the same CMOS sensor, the hack to make the DRebel XT act like a 20D won't be far behind...

[sheilamarie.livejournal.com]

Strike that, it is true: http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/eosdigital2/

Can't find anything on pricing yet, just something to look out for.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. There's the perpetual problem with technology purchases: there is always *something* just around the corner. Without a cut-off point a person can end up waiting forever for the next-and-better.

Ooooh, you shall rock.

[van-champion.livejournal.com]

Myself, I opted to get my old point-and-shoot film-winder repaired (about $30, significantly less than I feared). Should be good for the next little while. That being said, though, there's some definite merits to going digital, as much as I like working with the film medium.

It'll be nice to get back to my publicity work, whatever camera I'm using. Heh.

So what shall you do with the venerable 2.1 Mpx model?

Re: Ooooh, you shall rock.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I will be keeping it the old one. I should be able to M^acGyver something to use it in conjuntion with the new one for my stereo photography.

[tnkgrl.livejournal.com]

Nice!

I have an affordable point & shoot 3 Mpixel Olympus camera and it takes great pictures and it quite rugged (it survived my abuse at Burning Man, including being dropped into the playa dust)...

Enjoy :)

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yup. My old one is Olympus as well. It's held up well, so there is a certain amount of brand loyalty playing into my decision.

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

What about playa IN the camera , behind the lens, - I have many a collection of pictures with dirt all over the lens.

[tnkgrl.livejournal.com]

The lens was retracted and protected behind the sliding cover at the time... I just cleaned the lens and camera body after Burning Man and there's no visible artifacts in my pictures since BM (nor in my pictures from BM, even)!

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

I was a little rougher

I got the best shots by lying down in the playa and shooting from ground level. But this tends to make you (and your camera) a LOT dirtier.

I also had to learn the quick switch from wide angle to zoom. (you would see something like La Contessa go by in the distance but you would have your wide angle on to capture as much of one of David Bests' temples- so you would switch as quickly as possible to caputer it and wouldn't have tiem to clean it)

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

Ahh - one of those cameras that can shoot down planes ....